By code, buildings such as industrial, school and public buildings require fire and smoke barrier opening protectives. They also require emergency egress capability. Due to the simplistic operation and known designs of swing door exit hardware, side-hinged swinging doors are commonly used to simultaneously accomplish both.
However, side-hinged swinging doors are not always the desired design choice to meet code requirements. For structures needing higher occupancy load egress and fire and smoke protection requirements, multiple swing doors and/or banks of swing doors and their associated frame assemblies are used. The framing requirements of multiple doors and/or banks of doors present architectural challenges for building designers.
In an attempt to overcome these challenges, a variety of door designs have been developed. One known design uses up to two swinging fire door and frame assemblies that store in pockets perpendicular to the opening. A second known design includes a bank of swinging fire door and frame assemblies that are attached to the bottom of a coiling door. Although these designs include commonly accepted side-hinge swinging doors, they require significantly more head or side room clearances and cost more to manufacture than earlier designs.
Another known design uses commonly accepted side-hinge swinging doors in an accordion folding fire door configuration. However, this design requires side stack space for the folded accordion door and non-folding side-hinge swinging door(s). Because occupancy load determines the amount of door opening/number of required doors, each required side-hinge swinging door mandates additional side stack space, thereby reducing the overall free space and presenting construction challenges.
Still another known design uses accordion folding fire doors with an integral DC power supply and curtain mounted egress activation hardware that causes electric opening of the door for egress. These doors mandate ample side room to store the accordion folding fire door and operating system.
Overhead coiling fire doors have been developed to overcome the aforementioned challenges. The overhead coiling fire door is provided with an operator that will run the door under both normal condition and during a fire and smoke alarm condition ideally at an established average door speed. Such configurations allow building designers the ability to reduce the construction costs and aesthetic problems associated with numerous banks of fire/emergency egress doors.
Because the overhead coiling fire door utilizes a powered operator, battery backup is employed to maintain operational capability during a power failure. There remains a continuing need for improved methods of providing overhead coiling door emergency egress during a fire and smoke alarm condition. The present invention fulfills this need and further provides related advantages.